


anything you ever did was strictly by design (but you got it wrong)

by shield_maiden



Series: Harringrove [9]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Nancy Wheeler is meddling but only because she cares, These dumb boys are finally getting somewhere an it’s about god damn time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 15:13:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20229928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shield_maiden/pseuds/shield_maiden
Summary: “You need to stop playing whatever game you’re playing with Steve.” Nancy says, it’s rushed, like all of the words were fighting their way out of her mouth at once.“What game?” Billy asks, denial feels like the easy route, play dumb and pretend he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Even if the look on her face tells him that she knows that he knows.





	anything you ever did was strictly by design (but you got it wrong)

**Author's Note:**

> So uh, this one took me a while. In my defence I had my mother’s birthday in July and then my own last week. Hopefully the length of this one makes up for it.
> 
> Title is from ‘Leave a Trace’ by CHVRCHES.

Alarm bells are ringing in his head as soft lips press against his own.

Steve Harrington is kissing him and he can’t bring himself to kiss him back. Because kissing him back, to Billy, feels dangerously close to admitting something that he’s admitted to himself - that he has feelings for him.

So he pushes Steve away, pushes him back against the tree trunk hard enough that his head makes a dull thud as it hits, a safe arms length. He presses the tips of his fingers into Steve’s sweater covered pec and feels the hectic thump of his heart. It matches his own.

Steve looks at him, all heartbroken and sad just for a second, and then he’s slapping his hand away and pushing past him, shoulder checking him as he goes.

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look back, and leaves him in the woods. 

Billy hopes Steve hates him - because nothing good can come from anything else. 

He drives himself home, and it’s almost a miracle that he makes it in one piece. 

——————————————————————

The rest of the weekend is a bit of a bust, he spends his daylight hours under the Camaro, wrench in hand tinkering away and blasting rock music so loud he can’t hear himself think.

He doesn’t want to hear himself think. His thoughts are full of Steve and his plush red lips. It makes him want to self destruct so fucking badly. He goads Neil, baits him with blatant disrespect until he snaps, he would snap anyway if he knew how love sick his son is over another boy.

His dreams are worse than his waking thoughts.

Every night he dreams of Steve, sometimes they’re fighting, usually it’s Steve beating him up, and he can’t seem to fight back, it’s like he’s frozen. He startles awake when Steve calls him a ‘fucking faggot’, and it takes him a few moments to calm back down.

Sometimes he dreams that they’re fucking, and it’s like watching the highlight reel of all their previous encounters.

Sometimes he dreams that they’re making love, it’s slow and easy. These ones always disturb him the most the next morning, and he wonders if Neil can somehow sense the shame that is rolling off of him like waves.

———————————

Monday morning fills him with dread.

He doesn’t want to go to school and have to see Steve in the hallways all day. But he also doesn’t want to stay home either, walking on eggshells around Neil and Susan - who is already looking at him strangely as he grabs a banana and herds Max out the door without so much as a word.

He catches his reflection in the rear view mirror, there’s a purplish bruise on his cheekbone, and he can’t remember if it’s from Steve or Neil. The split lip though, that was definitely Neil.

They spend the drive in silence, Max staring out the window at the scenery rushing past. That’s how things have been since she almost castrated him with Steve’s fucking bat, and usually he wouldn’t care, but this morning the silence only serves to unnerve him more.

He reaches for the stereo - he needs something to fill the silence- , flicking it on and blasting Metallica so loud he feels the bass through the floor. It works, until he catches Max glancing at him. 

“What?” He snaps, jerking the volume down abruptly. 

She just raises her eyebrows at him and goes back to staring out the window. He has to force himself to take a deep breath as he turns the volume back up. The rest of the drive passes quickly and Max is unbuckling her seatbelt before he’s even got the Camaro in park.

“Don’t forget, I’ve got AV club this afternoon and you said you’d wait for me.” She says, fixing him with an impressive glare as she shoulders her backpack. 

Ah shit. He’d forgotten about that. And no doubt Steve would be there waiting for the weird kid with the curly hair. He could tell her to make her own fucking way home, but that will result in yet another lecture about respect and responsibility from Neil, and he finds that he’s really not in the mood to push anyone’s buttons today. So he just nods and locks the car up. 

Max is gone by the time he looks up.

——————————————

It quickly becomes apparent that Steve is not at school, after seeing his dumb floppy hair out of the corner of his eye for the last week, his absence is jarring and noticeable to Billy.

It lingers at the back of his mind, all the way through AP English class, distracts him enough that he doesn’t notice Nancy Wheeler leaning against his locker until he’s face to face with her, forcing him to stop abruptly to avoid colliding with her.

“Can I help you with something, Nancy?” He asks, turning on the charm with a smile that makes his split lip sting  
.  
He probably could have predicted with startling accuracy the way she purses her lips at him and tuts, her blue eyes narrowing at him.

“We need to talk,” She says.

Jesus, this is just what he needs this century. Prissy Wheeler lecturing him.

“I’d love too, but I have bio.” He snarks, wishing he could shove her aside, get his textbook and leave. But he swore a long time ago that he would never hurt a girl, he’s not that kind of guy. (Briefly, he wonders what kind of guy he is if he gets off from choking his rival while they fuck in the deserted locker rooms after gym class.) 

“It’s about Steve.” 

He feels the colour drain from his face as his stomach drops into his boots in a wave of panic, does she know? About them? How could she know?

“What about Steve?” He says, hoping his voice is steady enough to sound like he doesn’t care, because he doesn’t want to care. (Except he does care, he really, really does. Fuck.)

She at least has the decency to glance over her shoulder at the rapidly thinning crowd of students before she speaks. “You and Steve.”

He prays she’s not going to have the conversation he thinks she wants to have here, it’s entirely too exposed, someone could walk by at any moment and overhear them. He shakes his head at her, trying to convey just how bad of an idea it is. She purses her lips tighter, but she nods minutely and he feels the tension in his shoulders ease a fraction. 

“You’ve got study hall before lunch, right?” She asks, he wonders how she knows his schedule but nods anyway. “Good, meet me in the library.”

And just like that she’s gone again, and he feels the knot of anxiety tighten in his stomach.

—————————————

She’s waiting for him when he slinks into the library, with an arm full of textbooks, like she’s actually here to study. And maybe she is, he wouldn’t put it past her. 

He almost expects her to take a seat at one of the tables, to force him to have this conversation in the middle of the library, like they’re discussing Mrs Clicks latest assignment. He’s thankful when she leads him back into one of the smaller private study rooms and shuts the door as he shifts awkwardly on the other side of the table, too nervous to keep still. She places her books on the table before she looks at him — he thinks she looks apprehensive, and he hopes she’s struggling with the moral dilemma of what she’s about to do.

“You need to stop playing whatever game you’re playing with Steve.” She says, it’s rushed, like all of the words were fighting their way out of her mouth at once.

“What game?” Billy asks, denial feels like the easy route, play dumb and pretend he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Even if the look on her face tells him that she knows that he knows.

“You know.” She tells him as much, her chin jutting out, daring him to argue with her. When he doesn’t she continues, her hands twisting together as she speaks. “He’s...struggling. It’s not helping, having you mess with him. He cares, more than you think. I think you do too.”

“How do you know?” He scoffs, injecting as much venom into his voice as he can.

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not stupid, Billy. Steve told me, and you, well, you’re not as subtle as you think you are. It really wasn’t hard to put it all together after that.”

“You love him, don’t you?”

It’s like a punch to the gut, it leaves him deflated if all of the denial and anger he’d tried to fill himself with and he slumps into a sitting position on the corner of the table. It’s a release, in a way, to have the truth ripped out of him and bared in front of them both. But he also feels exposed, like she’s flayed him open and is staring directly into the depths of him, watching the hummingbird beat of his heart. 

She leans against the opposite corner, taking his body language and silence as the confirmation it is. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear.” He scoffs again, she has no idea how dangerous this is for him, how Neil will beat him within an inch of his life if he even suspects his son is actually really a fucking fag. 

“It wasn’t meant to be this way.” He says bitterly. “It was only ever meant to be a game, a distraction. I wanted to break him at the start, just to know I could.”

Nancy is frowning at him, not like she’s angry or disappointed, but like she’s trying to figure out how he works inside, he’s not sure he likes it. “And now?”

“I don’t know.” He says carefully, he’s never allowed himself to think about or examine what he might want from Steve in too much detail. The possible answer is far too terrifying for him to contemplate. “I- don’t do love. I’m not made for it. I don’t know how to give it, and I don’t deserve it either.” He frowns to himself. “Steve deserves better than that.”

Nancy is silent, and when he looks over at her, he sees the pity on her face and it somehow makes him feel even smaller than Neil does. He doesn’t deserve her pity either, and he definitely doesn’t want it.

“Maybe you should let Steve decide what he think he deserves.” She finally says, slowly and carefully, like she’s deliberately choosing each syllable of each word.

“Steve doesn’t even like me.” He scoffs, thinking back to Friday night, how Steve had looked at him like he hated him in the split second before he’d shouldered past him into the night. 

Nancy has the audacity to roll her god damn eyes and look at him with pity again, but this time it’s not the pity reserved for someone with a shitty home life and abusive father, it’s the pity he knows she reserves for someone stupid. He’s seen her look at Steve that way.

“Steve likes you.” She says, as though it’s just a known fact. 

His stomach swoops wildly and his heart seizes for a moment, like he’s on a roller coaster and has just tipped over the edge of the big drop. He shrugs, hoping it comes off as nonchalant and uncaring, but deep down he’s afraid, and he wonders again, exactly what Steve has told her.

He must look visibly uncomfortable though, because Wheeler slides off her corner of the table with a thin smile, but he can still see the faint worry and hesitation in her eyes. She gathers her books again, clutching them to her chest as though they’re a security blanket.

“Talk to him, Billy.” She says as she reaches behind herself for the door handle. “Please, it’s not too late.”

And then she’s gone, closing the door behind her with a soft click. 

——————————————————

Nancy’s words stay with him for the rest of the day, they will gnaw at him mercilessly, distracting him completely from anything else going on around him.

Steve Harrington likes him, at least according to Nancy Wheeler — who could be lying.

But she seemed sincere enough. And she probably knows Steve better than almost anyone. (That thought prompts a pang of jealousy, even though he knows there’s nothing between them anymore; that Wheeler is just as disgustingly in love with Byers as Billy himself is with Steve.) He can’t think of a genuine reason for her to lie, but he’s still suspicious all the same. Like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for it to turn into a nasty joke.

He breaks up with Stacy at lunch. He almost feels sorry for her as she walks away from their table, tears streaming down her cheeks. Carol looks at him thunderously as she follows after her, no doubt going to hole up in the girls bathrooms and cry and bitch about him. Tommy looks at him like he’s lost his mind, and Billy just shrugs. He’s never given a fuck what Tommy or Carol think of him, they’re both leeches, hanging on to him for the sake of boosting their own popularity when the truth is that they’re both boring as shit.

By the time the school day is over he’s jittery and nervous, brimming with an excess of energy that he doesn’t really know what to do with. He could fight someone, but as he looks around the rapidly emptying parking lot, he feels like that’s a missed opportunity. 

Normally he would find Steve and drag him into a deserted classroom or under the bleachers and push him to his knees, a hand fisted in that ridiculous brown hair, and blow off some steam that way. But that’s also very clearly not an option right now.

He sits and broods in the Camaro for so long that he doesn’t notice the time until Max raps her knuckles against the passenger window, her eyebrows raised at him as if she’s asking why he hasn’t let her in yet. He reaches over and flicks the lock up, rolling his eyes as she huffs and sits down, placing her backpack and her skateboard between her feet. 

They don’t talk on the way home, talking hasn’t ever been something they do. They don’t ask each other how they are or how their day was, it’s just not something their family does. Susan had tried once, over dinner, and Neil had shut that down so fast it had given Billy whiplash.

“Homework, Max.” He barks out as he unlocks the front door. She rolls her eyes as she passes him, their shoulders brushing as she heads for her room, shutting the door when she gets there. He’s bizarrely glad at how self sufficient and obedient she can be, he’s not a good brother, he knows, but she’s not doing it because he asked. She’s doing it to avoid Neil. Keeping her head down and staying out of trouble. Respect and Responsibility.

If he were smart, Billy would do the same.

Billy has never been smart when it comes to staying out of trouble.

—————————————

He leaves the house after Neil has passed out on the couch, snoring loudly over the sound of the TV. He pauses in the kitchen, eyeing the bottle of vodka Susan keeps on top of the fridge and never seems to notice if any happens to be missing.

No, this is something he should probably be sober for.

The drive to Steve’s house is quiet - the streets are empty and abandoned, as they should be in a town like Hawkins well after 9pm on a Monday - but far too short.

He feels the knot of anxiety that has been present since his morning run in with Nancy tighten in his stomach as Steve’s house comes into view, and he briefly wonders if it’s going to cause the dry meatloaf Susan had made for dinner to make a reappearance. He hopes not.

There’s no lights on in the Harrington home, at least from the front, as it looms fancy and foreboding above him. Steve’s Beemer is in the driveway though, so he takes that as a good sign and throws the Camaro into park behind it.

His boots crunch on the gravel path that seems to stretch on forever, but he finally reaches the front door. He jabs at the bell with his finger repeatedly, and listens to it echo throughout the house on the other side of the door. 

He jabs it a few more times until he hears footsteps thundering down the stairs and Steve’s voice on the other side of the door.

“Nancy, I told you I’m fine-“ the rest of his sentence dying on Steve’s lips as he yanks the door open, clearly expecting to see his ex girlfriend and definitely not Billy, who is standing there with his finger still poised over the doorbell.

Normally, Billy would have made some kind of flirtatious comment, but he finds his mouth dry, now that he’s face to face with Steve. 

He’s wearing a ratty T-shirt and sweatpants, his hair sticking up at all angles. And just like that, and half baked plan Billy had had of having a conversation goes out the window as he does what he should have done on Friday night, and kisses Steve, swallowing his surprised gasp and taking the opportunity to slip his tongue into the other boy’s mouth.

Somehow he ends up inside, his back against the now shut door. Then Steve is pulling away, pressing his hand against Billy’s chest, keeping him at arms length when he tries to follow him, eager to continue kissing him.

The look on Steve’s face when he shakes his head makes him stop, it’s flitting rapidly between confusion, hurt, and hope. He thinks his own face might mirror it.

Finally Steve speaks. His voice is quiet, and Billy’s heart sinks.

“You- you can’t just come here and kiss me after acting like I’m nothing, Billy.” 

His voice is quiet, and Billy’s heart sinks and he sighs, lowering his gaze. He can’t do anything right can he?

“I know.” His mouth twisting into a frown. “I think we need to talk.”

**Author's Note:**

> I think maybe a few more parts and we might be done here? I’m thinking it might be easier to group these series into their own parent works? One for each POV? And then have my unrelated Harringrove works in the collection by themselves. 
> 
> Also I could easily be persuaded to do a bonus!Nancy POV.
> 
> I love hearing what you guys think of my work, so if you like it (or you don’t like it) please leave me a comment!
> 
> I take requests on tumblr @lesbian-rob1n


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